Probe: No foul play in death of WWII Polish leader | The Times of Israel Probe: No foul play in death of WWII Polish leader Poland’s leader in exile confronted Stalin shortly before death in a 1943 plane crash General Wladyslaw Sikorski (photo credit: public domain) Newsroom Josef Stalin WARSAW, Poland — A five-year Polish investigation has found no evidence of foul play in the plane crash that killed Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski in 1943, when he was serving as Poland’s leader in exile during World War II, an official said Monday. Sikorski was the prime minister of Poland’s government-in-exile in London when he died in a mysterious plane crash just after takeoff from Gibraltar. He was on his way back from inspecting Polish troops in Africa at a time when his country was under brutal Nazi occupation. A British investigation blamed the plane crash on a blocked altitude rudder. But Sikorski’s dispute that year with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin over the deaths of more than 20,000 Polish officers who had been taken prisoner by the Soviet troops led to speculation of an assassination.

Some Polish historians also believe that dispute was angering the Allies, who needed Stalin’s help in fighting Germany’s Nazis. Poland’s National Remembrance Institute, which investigates Nazi and communist crimes against Poles, opened an investigation in 2008 to check for possible Soviet-instigated sabotage against Sikorski. It examined the bodies of him and three other Poles killed in the crash, questioned witnesses, and examined old files. Andrzej Arseniuk, a spokesman for the investigators, said it found no proof of a crime and effectively upheld the British investigation. But he also said the Polish probe could be reopened if new evidence emerges. Copyright 2013 The Associated Press Poles grieve over president killed in plane crash - Boston.com Europe Poles grieve over president killed in plane crash Volunteers carry candles in front of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Poland, Sunday, April 11, 2010, after Polish President Lech Kaczynski died in a plane crash.

Kaczynski, his wife and some of the country's highest military and civilian leaders died on Saturday April, 10, 2010, when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 96. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek) By Matt Moore and Vanessa Gera Associated Press Writers / April 11, 2010 E-mail this article Add a personal message:(80 character limit) Your E-mail: | Text size – + WARSAW, Poland—Poland's government moved swiftly Sunday to show that it was staying on course after the deaths of its president and dozens of political, military and religious leaders, even as tens of thousands of Poles expressed their grief over the plane crash in Russia that shocked the country. New acting chiefs of the military were already in place and an interim director of the central bank was named Sunday, with work running as usual, said Pawel Gras, a government spokesman. It was a rare positive note on a day wracked by grief for the 96 dead and laced with reminders of Poland's dark history with its powerful neighbor.

The Saturday crash occurred in thick fog near the Katyn forest, where Josef Stalin's secret police in 1940 systematically executed thousands of Polish military officers in the western Soviet Union. President Lech Kaczynski and those aboard the aging Soviet-built plane had been headed there to honor the dead. A preliminary analysis showed the plane had been working fine, a Russian investigator said. Tens of thousands of Poles softly sang the national anthem and tossed flowers at the hearse carrying the 60-year-old Kaczynski's body Sunday to the presidential palace after it was returned from Russia's Smolensk airport, the site of the crash. The coffin bearing the president's remains were met first by his daughter Marta, whose mother, the first lady, Maria Kaczynska, also perished in the crash. She knelt before it, her forehead resting on the coffin. She was followed by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the former prime minister, and the president's twin brother. He, too, knelt and pressed his head against the flag-draped coffin before rising slowly and crossing himself. Standing sentinel were four Polish troopers bearing sabers.

There was no sign of the twins' ailing mother Jadwiga, who has been hospitalized. The president had canceled several foreign trips lately to be by her side. The coffin was placed aboard a Mercedes-Benz hearse and slowly traveled several miles to the palace, watched by thousands of weeping Poles. "He taught Poles how to respect our traditions, how to fight for our dignity, and he made his sacrifice there at that tragic place," said mourner Boguslaw Staron, 70. President Dmitry Medvedev declared Monday a day of mourning in Russia, and his country held two minutes of silence in memory of those killed in the crash. Church bells pealed at noon and emergency sirens shrieked for nearly a minute before fading. Hundreds bowed their heads, eyes closed, in front of the presidential palace. Buses and trams halted in the streets. No date for a funeral has been set and the Polish presidential palace has not yet said if Kaczynski will lie in state, though it is not a Polish tradition. Kaczynski was the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen.

Wladyslaw Sikorski was killed in a mysterious plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943. Poland is a young democracy, adopting its constitution in 1997 after decades under communism, but political scientist Kazimierz Kik of Kielce University said he was confident it would remain stable. "The democracy is passing the test, there is no doubt about it," he said. "This tragedy does not threaten the state in any measure, Poland's institutions are strong, but there is the trauma of the nation." Among the dead were Poland's army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. At the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army in Warsaw, hundreds gathered for a morning Mass and left flowers and written condolences. Also aboard the aging Tu-154 plane were the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the army chaplain, the head of the National Security Office, the deputy parliament speaker, the Olympic Committee head, the civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers.

Michal Boni, an official in the prime minister's office, said it remained in constant contact with the deputy head of the National Bank of Poland, Piotr Wiesiolek, who is acting director of the bank until a new one is appointed. He said the bank's Monetary Policy Council will hold a meeting on Monday, as previously planned. "We are prepared to make various decisions, but we do not see that anything dangerous could happen in the economy," Boni said. Poland's economy has so far managed to avoid recession. The acting president, Parliament Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, said he would call for early elections within 14 days, in line with the constitution. The vote must be held within another 60 days. Kaczynski had indicated he would seek a second term in presidential elections this fall but was expected to face an uphill struggle against Komorowski and his governing party, the moderate, pro-business Civic Platform. Kaczynski's nationalist conservative Law and Justice Party could benefit, however, from the support of a country mourning the loss of its president, particularly with elections now set to take place by late June. The focus now turns to the investigation into the crash.

The head of Russia's top investigative body, Alexander Bastrykin, told Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Sunday that a preliminary analysis of the recording of the crew's conversations indicated the plane had no technical problems. "The recording that we have shows that there had been no problem with the plane, that the pilot had been informed about difficult weather conditions, but still decided to land," Bastrykin told Putin, according to minutes of official meeting released by the Russian Cabinet. In Warsaw, government spokesman Gras lauded the cooperation with Russian investigators and sought to tamp down fears that Poland was not being consulted in the case. He told reporters that Russian authorities waited until their Polish counterparts arrived before the black boxes were opened and analyzed. The Smolensk regional government said Russian dispatchers had asked the Polish crew to divert from the military airport there because of the fog and land instead in Moscow or Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus. Russia's Transport Minister Igor Levitin reported to Putin that the pilot had been warned about difficult weather conditions, with visibility limited to 400 meters (1,300 feet).

Vasily Piskarev, a deputy chief of Russia's top investigative body, said that 24 victims' bodies had been identified so far, most of them based on clothes and IDs. He said it could be difficult to identify some of the victims. Russian television stations showed grief-stricken relatives arriving in Russia to help identify the bodies. Former Polish president, Solidarity founder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa, said it was too soon to cast blame. "Someone must have been making decisions on that plane. I don't believe that the pilot made decisions single-handedly," he told reporters. "That's not possible. I have flown a lot and whenever there were doubts, they always came to the leaders and asked for a decision, and based on that, pilots made decisions. Sometimes the decision was against the leader's instructions." The Tu-154 was the workhorse of Eastern Bloc civil aviation in the 1970s and 1980s. Poland has long discussed replacing the planes that carry the country's leaders but said it lacked the funds.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s in the past four decades, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service, largely because the planes do not meet international noise restrictions and use too much fuel. The Polish presidential plane was fully overhauled in December, its three engines repaired and updated with retrofitted electronic and navigation equipment. -------- Associated Press Writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Victoria Buravchenko in Smolensk, Russia, contributed to this report. © Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. President's body returned to Poland after crash killed 96 - USATODAY.com The body of President Lech Kaczynski was returned to Poland on Sunday, where it was greeted by grieving dignitaries and thousands of Poles lining the route from Warsaw's airport to the presidential palace.

President's body returned to Poland after crash killed 96 Updated Enlarge By Leszek Szymanski, AFP/Getty Images Mourners observe a minute of silence in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw on Sunday, the day after a plane crash in Russia killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and many of the country's military and state elite. MOSCOW (AP)  Poland 's government moved swiftly Sunday to show that it was staying on course after the deaths of its president and dozens of political, military and religious leaders, even as tens of thousands of Poles expressed their grief over the plane crash in Russia that shocked the country. New acting chiefs of the military were already in place and an interim director of the central bank was named Sunday, with work running as usual, said Pawel Gras, a government spokesman. It was a rare positive note on a day wracked by grief for the 96 dead and laced with reminders of Poland's dark history with its powerful neighbor. The Saturday crash occurred in thick fog near the Katyn forest, where Josef Stalin 's secret police in 1940 systematically executed thousands of Polish military officers in the western Soviet Union .

President Lech Kaczynski and those aboard the aging Soviet-built plane had been headed there to honor the dead. A preliminary analysis showed the plane had been working fine, a Russian investigator said. Tens of thousands of Poles softly sang the national anthem and tossed flowers at the hearse carrying the 60-year-old Kaczynski's body Sunday to the presidential palace after it was returned from Russia's Smolensk airport, the site of the crash. CONDOLENCES: President Obama expresses sympathy The coffin bearing the president's remains were met first by his daughter Marta, whose mother, the first lady, Maria Kaczynska, also perished in the crash. She knelt before it, her forehead resting on the coffin. She was followed by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the former prime minister, and the president's twin brother. He, too, knelt and pressed his head against the flag-draped coffin before rising slowly and crossing himself. Standing sentinel were four Polish troopers bearing sabers. There was no sign of the twins' ailing mother Jadwiga, who has been hospitalized. The president had canceled several foreign trips lately to be by her side.

The coffin was placed aboard a Mercedes-Benz hearse and slowly traveled several miles to the palace, watched by thousands of weeping Poles. "He taught Poles how to respect our traditions, how to fight for our dignity, and he made his sacrifice there at that tragic place," said mourner Boguslaw Staron, 70. President Dmitry Medvedev declared Monday a day of mourning in Russia, and his country held two minutes of silence in memory of those killed in the crash. Church bells pealed at noon and emergency sirens shrieked for nearly a minute before fading. Hundreds bowed their heads, eyes closed, in front of the presidential palace. Buses and trams halted in the streets. No date for a funeral has been set and the Polish presidential palace has not yet said if Kaczynski will lie in state, though it is not a Polish tradition. Kaczynski was the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski was killed in a mysterious plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943.

Poland is a young democracy, adopting its constitution in 1997 after decades under communism, but political scientist Kazimierz Kik of Kielce University said he was confident it would remain stable. "The democracy is passing the test, there is no doubt about it," he said. "This tragedy does not threaten the state in any measure, Poland's institutions are strong, but there is the trauma of the nation." Among the dead were Poland's army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. At the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army in Warsaw, hundreds gathered for a morning Mass and left flowers and written condolences. Also aboard the aging Tu-154 plane were the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the army chaplain, the head of the National Security Office, the deputy parliament speaker, the Olympic Committee head, the civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers. Michal Boni, an official in the prime minister's office, said it remained in constant contact with the deputy head of the National Bank of Poland, Piotr Wiesiolek, who is acting director of the bank until a new one is appointed.

He said the bank's Monetary Policy Council will hold a meeting on Monday, as previously planned. "We are prepared to make various decisions, but we do not see that anything dangerous could happen in the economy," Boni said. Poland's economy has so far managed to avoid recession. The acting president, Parliament Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, said he would call for early elections within 14 days, in line with the constitution. The vote must be held within another 60 days. Kaczynski had indicated he would seek a second term in presidential elections this fall but was expected to face an uphill struggle against Komorowski and his governing party, the moderate, pro-business Civic Platform . Kaczynski's nationalist conservative Law and Justice Party could benefit, however, from the support of a country mourning the loss of its president, particularly with elections now set to take place by late June. The focus now turns to the investigation into the crash. The head of Russia's top investigative body, Alexander Bastrykin, told Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Sunday that a preliminary analysis of the recording of the crew's conversations indicated the plane had no technical problems.

"The recording that we have shows that there had been no problem with the plane, that the pilot had been informed about difficult weather conditions, but still decided to land," Bastrykin told Putin, according to minutes of official meeting released by the Russian Cabinet. In Warsaw, government spokesman Gras lauded the cooperation with Russian investigators and sought to tamp down fears that Poland was not being consulted in the case. He told reporters that Russian authorities waited until their Polish counterparts arrived before the black boxes were opened and analyzed. The Smolensk regional government said Russian dispatchers had asked the Polish crew to divert from the military airport there because of the fog and land instead in Moscow or Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus. Russia's Transport Minister Igor Levitin reported to Putin that the pilot had been warned about difficult weather conditions, with visibility limited to 400 meters. Vasily Piskarev, a deputy chief of Russia's top investigative body, said that 24 victims' bodies had been identified so far, most of them based on clothes and IDs. He said it could be difficult to identify some of the victims. Russian television stations showed grief-stricken relatives arriving in Russia to help identify the bodies.

Former Polish president, Solidarity founder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa, said it was too soon to cast blame. "Someone must have been making decisions on that plane. I don't believe that the pilot made decisions single-handedly," he told reporters. "That's not possible. I have flown a lot and whenever there were doubts, they always came to the leaders and asked for a decision, and based on that, pilots made decisions. Sometimes the decision was against the leader's instructions." The Tu-154 was the workhorse of Eastern Bloc civil aviation in the 1970s and 1980s. Poland has long discussed replacing the planes that carry the country's leaders but said it lacked the funds. According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s in the past four decades, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service, largely because the planes do not meet international noise restrictions and use too much fuel. The Polish presidential plane was fully overhauled in December, its three engines repaired and updated with retrofitted electronic and navigation equipment.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Posted E-mail | Print | To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones . For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com . Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com . Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more . Poland Mourns President Killed in Crash Poland Mourns President Killed in Crash Daily News Article — Posted on April 12, 2010 Jump to... Just Questions (by Matt Moore and Vanessa Gera, WashingtonTimes.com) AP, WARSAW – Poland’s government moved swiftly Sunday to show that it was staying on course after the deaths of its president and dozens of political, military and religious leaders, even as tens of thousands of Poles expressed their grief over the plane crash in Russia that shocked the country.

New acting chiefs of the military were already in place and an interim director of the central bank was named Sunday, with work running as usual, said Pawel Gras, a government spokesman. It was a rare positive note on a day racked by grief for the 96 dead and laced with reminders of Poland’s dark history with its powerful neighbor. The Saturday crash occurred in thick fog near the Katyn forest, where Josef Stalin’s secret police in 1940 systematically executed thousands of Polish military officers in the western Soviet Union, [in an effort to crush the Polish resistance during WWII. Moscow only acknowledged responsibility for the killings, the Katyn Massacre, in 1990.] President Lech Kaczynski and those aboard the aging Soviet-built plane had been headed there to honor the dead. A preliminary analysis showed the plane had been working fine, a Russian investigator said. Tens of thousands of Poles softly sang the national anthem and tossed flowers at the hearse carrying the 60-year-old Mr. Kaczynski’s body Sunday to the presidential palace after it was returned from Russia’s Smolensk airport, the site of the crash.

The coffin bearing the president’s remains were met first by his daughter Marta, whose mother, the first lady, Maria Kaczynska, also perished in the crash. She knelt before it, her forehead resting on the coffin. She was followed by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the former prime minister, and the president’s twin brother. He, too, knelt and pressed his head against the flag-draped coffin before rising slowly and crossing himself. Standing sentinel were four Polish troopers bearing sabers. There was no sign of the twins’ ailing mother, Jadwiga, who has been hospitalized. The president had canceled several foreign trips lately to be by her side. The coffin was placed aboard a Mercedes-Benz hearse and slowly traveled several miles to the palace, watched by thousands of weeping Poles. “He taught Poles how to respect our traditions, how to fight for our dignity, and he made his sacrifice there at that tragic place,” said mourner Boguslaw Staron, 70. Russia President Dmitry Medvedev declared Monday a day of mourning in Russia, and his country held two minutes of silence in memory of those killed in the crash.

Church bells pealed at noon, and emergency sirens shrieked for nearly a minute before fading. Hundreds bowed their heads, eyes closed, in front of the presidential palace. Buses and trams halted in the streets. No date for a funeral has been set and the Polish presidential palace has not yet said if Mr. Kaczynski will lie in state, though it is not a Polish tradition. Mr. Kaczynski was the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski was killed in a mysterious plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943. Poland is a young democracy, adopting its constitution in 1997 after decades under communism, but political scientist Kazimierz Kik of Kielce University said he was confident it would remain stable. … Among the dead were Poland’s army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. At the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army in Warsaw, hundreds gathered for a morning Mass and left flowers and written condolences.

Also aboard the aging Tu-154 plane were the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the army chaplain, the head of the National Security Office, the deputy parliament speaker, the Olympic Committee head, the civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers. Michal Boni, an official in the prime minister’s office, said it remained in constant contact with the deputy head of the National Bank of Poland, Piotr Wiesiolek, who is acting director of the bank until a new one is appointed. He said the bank’s Monetary Policy Council will hold a meeting on Monday, as previously planned. The acting president, parliament Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, said he would call for early elections within 14 days, in line with the constitution. The vote must be held within 60 days after that. Associated Press. Reprinted from the Washington Times. For educational purposes only. This reprint does not constitute or imply any endorsement or sponsorship of any product, service, company or organization. Visit the website at washingtontimes.com . Questions WWII Polish Leader Wladyslaw Sikorski's Death Void of Foul Play - Inquest Gen.

Wladyslaw Sikorski and the Image of the Plane Crash that Led to His Death Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski and the Image of the Plane Crash that Led to His Death Warsaw, Poland – A five-year Polish investigation into the unexpected death of WWII Polish leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski in 1943 through a plane crash yielded no evidences of foul play, according to an official Monday. Sikorski was the Polish government in-exile’s Prime Minister that time in London when he suddenly died in a shady plane crash right after it took off from Gibraltar. Wladyslaw Sikorski was there to make an inspection on the Polish troops in Africa while his country was under control of the brutal hands of the Nazis. A British investigation blamed a blocked altitude rudder as the cause of the crash. However, Wladyslaw Sikorski’s dispute with Soviet’s leader Joseph Stalin that year over the annihilation of about 20,000 Polish officers who were taken captive by Soviet troops led to the hunch that it was somehow involved with the assassination.

A number of Polish historians also believed that the said dispute between the two leaders had irritated the Allies who needed Stalin’s help in keeping the Nazis at bay. Poland’s National Remembrance Institute, which looks into Nazi and Communist crimes directed against Poles, opened the probe last 2008 to see if Wladyslaw Sikorski’s death really contained evidences that it was instigated by the Soviets. The investigation went on to examine his body as well as three other Poles who were killed with him in the said crash, cross-examined the witnesses and probed into old files connected to the incident. A spokesman for the investigators, Andrzej Arseniuk, stated that they found no proofs of committed crime and completely supported the result of the earlier British investigation about the said crash. However, he also added that the Polish probe about the death of Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski can be reopened if new evidences do come out. Probe: No foul play in death of WWII Polish leader Probe: No foul play in death of WWII Polish leader Pin it Share WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A five-year Polish investigation has found no evidence of foul play in the plane crash that killed Gen.

Wladyslaw Sikorski in 1943, when he was serving as Poland's leader in exile during World War II, an official said Monday. Sikorski was the prime minister of Poland's government-in-exile in London when he died in a mysterious plane crash just after takeoff from Gibraltar. He was on his way back from inspecting Polish troops in Africa at a time when his country was under brutal Nazi occupation. A British investigation blamed the plane crash on a blocked altitude rudder. But Sikorski's dispute that year with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin over the deaths of more than 20,000 Polish officers who had been taken prisoner by the Soviet troops led to speculation of an assassination. Some Polish historians also believe that dispute was angering the Allies, who needed Stalin's help in fighting Germany's Nazis. Poland's National Remembrance Institute, which investigates Nazi and communist crimes against Poles, opened an investigation in 2008 to check for possible Soviet-instigated sabotage against Sikorski. It examined the bodies of him and three other Poles killed in the crash, questioned witnesses, and examined old files.

Andrzej Arseniuk, a spokesman for the investigators, said it found no proof of a crime and effectively upheld the British investigation. But he also said the Polish probe could be reopened if new evidence emerges. Reblog President’s body returned to Poland - World news - Europe | NBC News Video: What caused tragedy? Standing sentinel were four Polish troopers bearing sabers. There was no sign of the twins' ailing mother Jadwiga, who has been hospitalized. The president had canceled several foreign trips lately to be by her side. The coffin was placed aboard a Mercedes-Benz hearse and slowly traveled several miles to the palace, watched by thousands of weeping Poles. "He taught Poles how to respect our traditions, how to fight for our dignity, and he made he made his sacrifice there at that tragic place," said mourner Boguslaw Staron, 70. President Dmitry Medvedev declared Monday a day of mourning in Russia, and his country held two minutes of silence in memory of those killed in the crash. Church bells pealed at noon and emergency sirens shrieked for nearly a minute before fading. Hundreds bowed their heads, eyes closed, in front of the presidential palace.

Buses and trams halted in the streets. No date for a funeral has been set and the Polish presidential palace has not yet said if Kaczynski will lie in state, though it is not a Polish tradition. Kaczynski was the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski was killed in a mysterious plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943. Slideshow: Poland mourns a great loss Poland is a young democracy, adopting its constitution in 1997 after decades under communism, but political scientist Kazimierz Kik of Kielce University said he was confident it would remain stable. "The democracy is passing the test, there is no doubt about it," he said. "This tragedy does not threaten the state in any measure, Poland's institutions are strong, but there is the trauma of the nation." Among the dead were Poland's army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. At the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army in Warsaw, hundreds gathered for a morning Mass and left flowers and written condolences.

Advertise Also aboard the aging Tu-154 plane were the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the army chaplain, the head of the National Security Office, the deputy parliament speaker, the Olympic Committee head, the civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers. Michal Boni, an official in the prime minister's office, said it remained in constant contact with the deputy head of the National Bank of Poland, Piotr Wiesiolek, who is acting director of the bank until a new one is appointed. He said the bank's Monetary Policy Council will hold a meeting on Monday, as previously planned. "We are prepared to make various decisions, but we do not see that anything dangerous could happen in the economy," Boni said. Poland's economy has so far managed to avoid recession. The acting president, Parliament Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, said he would call for early elections within 14 days, in line with the constitution. The vote must be held within another 60 days. Kaczynski had indicated he would seek a second term in presidential elections this fall but was expected to face an uphill struggle against Komorowski and his governing party, the moderate, pro-business Civic Platform.

Kaczynski's nationalist conservative Law and Justice Party could benefit, however, from the support of a country mourning the loss of its president, particularly with elections now set to take place by late June. The focus now turns to the investigation into the crash. The head of Russia's top investigative body, Alexander Bastrykin, told Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Sunday that a preliminary analysis of the recording of the crew's conversations indicated the plane had no technical problems. "The recording that we have shows that there had been no problem with the plane, that the pilot had been informed about difficult weather conditions, but still decided to land," Bastrykin told Putin, according to minutes of official meeting released by the Russian Cabinet. In Warsaw, government spokesman Gras lauded the cooperation with Russian investigators and sought to tamp down fears that Poland was not being consulted in the case. He told reporters that Russian authorities waited until their Polish counterparts arrived before the black boxes were opened and analyzed. The Smolensk regional government said Russian dispatchers had asked the Polish crew to divert from the military airport there because of the fog and land instead in Moscow or Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus.

Video: Expert's view Vasily Piskarev, a deputy chief of Russia's top investigative body, said that 24 victims' bodies had been identified so far, most of them based on clothes and IDs. He said it could be difficult to identify some of the victims. Russian television stations showed grief-stricken relatives arriving in Russia to help identify the bodies. Former Polish president, Solidarity founder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa, said it was too soon to cast blame. "Someone must have been making decisions on that plane. I don't believe that the pilot made decisions single-handedly," he told reporters. "That's not possible. I have flown a lot and whenever there were doubts, they always came to the leaders and asked for a decision, and based on that, pilots made decisions. Sometimes the decision was against the leader's instructions." The Tu-154 was the workhorse of Eastern Bloc civil aviation in the 1970s and 1980s. Poland has long discussed replacing the planes that carry the country's leaders but said it lacked the funds.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s in the past four decades, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service, largely because the planes do not meet international noise restrictions and use too much fuel. The Polish presidential plane was fully overhauled in December, its three engines repaired and updated with retrofitted electronic and navigation equipment. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. A grieving Poland begins rebuilding government - The Boston Globe A grieving Poland begins rebuilding government Acting military, bank chiefs named A hearse carried the coffin of President Lech Kaczynski through Warsaw yesterday. He and others flying to Russia to honor Polish war dead were killed when their plane crashed.

(Franciszek Mazur/Agencja Gazeta via Reuters) Associated Press / April 12, 2010 E-mail this article Add a personal message:(80 character limit) Your E-mail: | Text size – + WARSAW — Poland’s government moved swiftly yesterday to show that it was staying on course after the deaths of its president and dozens of political, military, and religious leaders, even as tens of thousands of Poles expressed their grief over the plane crash in Russia that shocked the country. New acting chiefs of the military were already in place and an interim director of the central bank was named yesterday, with work running as usual, said Pawel Gras, a government spokesman. It was a rare positive note on a day filled with grief for the 96 dead and laced with reminders of Poland’s dark history with its powerful neighbor. The crash occurred Saturday in thick fog near the Katyn forest, where Josef Stalin’s secret police in 1940 systematically executed thousands of Polish military officers in the western Soviet Union. President Lech Kaczynski and those aboard the aging Soviet-built plane had been headed there to honor the dead.

A preliminary analysis of flight data recordings showed that the plane had no mechanical problems in flight, a Russian investigator said yesterday. Investigators are trying to determine why the pilot decided to make a risky landing in fog and whether any of the officials aboard influenced his decision. In August 2008, during Russia’s brief war with Georgia, Kaczynski got into a dispute with the pilot flying his plane to Tbilisi, The New York Times reported today, citing news accounts at the time. Kaczynski told the pilot to land despite dangerous conditions, but the pilot disagreed and diverted to Azerbaijan. Tens of thousands of Poles softly sang the national anthem and tossed flowers at the hearse carrying the 60-year-old Kaczynski’s body yesterday to the presidential palace after it was returned from Russia’s Smolensk airport, the site of the crash. The coffin bearing the president’s remains were met first by his daughter Marta, whose mother, Maria Kaczynska, also perished in the crash. She knelt before it, her forehead resting on the coffin. She was followed by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the former prime minister and the president’s twin brother.

He, too, knelt and pressed his head against the flag-draped coffin before rising slowly and crossing himself. Standing sentinel were four Polish troopers bearing sabers. There was no sign of the twins’ ailing mother, Jadwiga, who has been hospitalized. The president had canceled several foreign trips lately to be by her side. The coffin was placed in a hearse that slowly traveled several miles to the palace, watched by thousands of weeping Poles. No date for a funeral has been set, and the Polish presidential palace has not yet said whether Kaczynski will lie in state, though it is not a Polish tradition. President Dmitry Medvedev declared today a day of mourning in Russia, and his country held two minutes of silence in memory of those killed in the crash. Kaczynski was the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader General Wladyslaw Sikorski was killed in a mysterious plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943. Poland is a young democracy, adopting its constitution in 1997 after decades under communism, but political scientist Kazimierz Kik of Kielce University said he was confident it would remain stable.

“The democracy is passing the test. There is no doubt about it,’’ he said. “This tragedy does not threaten the state in any measure; Poland’s institutions are strong, but there is the trauma of the nation.’’ Among the dead were Poland’s army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and the heads of the air and land forces. At the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army in Warsaw, hundreds gathered for Mass and left flowers and written condolences. Also aboard the aging Tu-154 plane were the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the army chaplain, the head of the National Security Office, the deputy Parliament speaker, the Olympic Committee head, the civil rights commissioner, and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers. The acting president, Parliament Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, said he would call for early elections within 14 days, in line with the constitution. The vote must be held within another 60 days. Kaczynski had indicated he would seek a second term in presidential elections this fall but was expected to face an uphill struggle against Komorowski and his governing party, the moderate, probusiness Civic Platform.

The head of Russia’s top investigative body, Alexander Bastrykin, told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia yesterday that a preliminary analysis of the recording of the crew’s conversations indicated the plane had no technical problems. “The recording that we have shows that there had been no problem with the plane, that the pilot had been informed about difficult weather conditions but still decided to land,’’ Bastrykin told Putin, according to minutes of an official meeting released by the Russian Cabinet. © Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company. LOG IN TO COMMENT Did British double agent Kim Philby murder Polish war hero General Sikorski? - Telegraph Poland Did British double agent Kim Philby murder Polish war hero General Sikorski? A Second World War murder mystery featuring Winston Churchill, the British double agent Kim Philby and Joseph Stalin could be solved after the Polish government called for the body of a national hero to be exhumed. Image 1 of 2 At Downing Street: [from left] Viscount Halifax with Gen Sikorski, Winston Churchill and the Polish Foreign Minister M Zaleski.

Kim Philby ran British intelligence in Gibraltar from 1941 to 1944 Photo: GETTY By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin 1:50AM BST 01 Jul 2008 General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the leader of Poland's wartime government in exile, died 65 years ago this month when his plane plunged into the sea off Gibraltar. A British inquiry in 1943 found that the crash was caused by the plane's controls jamming. But rumours persist of a plot to kill Gen Sikorski, whose defence of the Polish national cause threatened to derail Britain's relationship with the Soviet Union. Now Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, and his prime minister, Donald Tusk, have demanded that Gen Sikorski's body be exhumed from its tomb in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, the traditional burial place of Polish heroes. "The tragic circumstances of the death of General Sikorski should be explained," said the president. Moves to exhume Sikorski's body follow a long campaign by Polish historians, who claim that it was not examined properly before burial.

They claim that he might have been killed before the crash, in which his daughter also died, and only the pilot survived. In particular, they want an examination of his skull to see whether he was shot. The general's death has attracted a swarm of conspiracy theories, which variously accuse British, Soviet and even rival Polish factions of orchestrating his murder. Related Articles WW2 agents 'failed the honey trap test' 13 Jan 2009 But the most insistent rumours suggest that his death was ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, incensed by Gen Sikorski's demand for an investigation into the Katyn massacre of Polish officers by Soviet troops. Stalin's accusers claim that Gen Sikorski's plane was left unguarded on the runway at Gibraltar, and could easily have been sabotaged. They also point out that on the day of the crash, July 4, 1943, a plane carrying the Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky and a small retinue of Soviet troops parked next to the doomed Polish leader's aircraft.

Allegations of a plot by the Soviet Union, determined not to let Polish nationalism get in the way of communist expansion after the war, have been further fuelled by the presence on Gibraltar of Kim Philby. The notorious spy was in charge of British intelligence operations in the territory from 1941 to 1944. The crash occurred 20 years before he defected to Russia, but he is thought to have been a double agent from the start of the war. Investigators have also pointed the finger at the British wartime leader Winston Churchill. In 1967 the German dramatist Rolf Hochhuth suggested in the play Soldiers that Churchill was so anxious over Gen Sikorski's impact on ties with Stalin that he ordered the assassination. Performances of the play were at first banned in Britain. Two years later Harold Wilson, briefed on the case, told the House of Commons such rumours should be "dismissed and brushed aside with the contempt they deserve". In his defence, Mr Hochhuth referred to the memoirs of the Yugoslav vice-president Milovan Djilas, who said Stalin warned that the British might try to kill Tito as they had Sikorski.

However, in declassified papers from 1969, the former pilot Sir Robin Cooper reviewed the wartime inquiry into Sikorski's death and concluded that "the possibility of Sikorski's murder by the British is excluded". "But," he added, "the possibility of his murder by persons unknown cannot be so excluded."

Question: Which Polish leader was killed in a plane crash in Gibraltar in 1943?
Answer: GENERAL SIKORSKI